“Chiefly how lovely the day is, and how well you look in that dress.” Darcy had not meant to say so much. He felt a thrill at how daring he had been, but also some concern.
Elizabeth smiled widely at him. “You say I am as lovely as this weather? I must thank Papa once again for buying me this dress.”
“I only wish you had let me buy you something,” Darcy replied.
Elizabeth wagged a finger. “Not until we are married.”
“You would think of it as charity otherwise?”
The way that Elizabeth’s smile disappeared and her face became fixed after Darcy asked that question made him ache to be able to hold and protect her once more. There was some pain around this.
“Maybe that is it. But no, it is not that. Not precisely—”
“I do look forward with delight to when we have married, and I will be able to ensure that you can wear every beautiful thing that you might like.”
Darcy was rather surprised by the way that Elziabeth frowned in reply to that.
He had expected her to be pleased by the notion. He shook his head. “I should have known that the chance to buy any sort of clothing would not please a woman who insisted on being given ‘book money’, instead of ‘pin money’.”
She laughed, and the cloud passed.
“Youlook very pleased with yourself,” Elizabeth said to Darcy after a little silence.
“Being dressed, seeing the children with your father, talking to you, walking about—being able to look down upon the harbor, feeling the breeze, hearing the ocean, and seeing the birds. I do not know that I have ever felt so completely happy.”
Elizabeth smiled at him. “You like talking to me that much?”
“We are dear friends.” He smiled at her.
“And my father, what do you think ofhim?” Elizabeth asked.
“I like him, even more than I expected. He is more sensible than I expected. More sound in his ways. And he loves the children, and they already adore him. I like to see George smiling in such a way. And the way he takes to Emily as well.”
“I love how you observe the children, and care for their feelings,” Elizabeth said. “You see them the way they actually are.”
Darcy felt a thrill at the way that Elizabeth had said, ‘I love’. He said seriously to her, “I love them both.”
The two paused next to a bench to look at each other. Darcy felt the strain of walking beginning to become serious, but he wished to push a little further. “I miss our nightly conversations,” he said to Elizabeth. “So I cannot be completely happy about your father being here.”
“Papa ismostinsistent on the proprieties being observed. But John was delighted to at last gain the right to change your bandages—and now that is not even necessary.” She smiled. “Papa still thinks in his heart that I am a virgin maiden of thirteen, and that I shall never have any particular delight in the attentions of a man—” She looked at him with meaning in her eyes. “That is not, in fact, the truth.”
Her arm intwined with his. She felt small, delicate, and yet strong. That happiness was filling him again. He was fortunate, so very fortunate, and he did not deserve it at all.
“It was stupid of me,” Elizabeth said, “to let my pride to keep me from my father for so long.”
“I used to think that pride was chiefly a virtue,” Darcy said.
“I do not think it was chiefly pride which made you fight Mr. Wickham, but rather that he provoked you.”
“It was still pride.” The memory of that day. Wickham’s body falling. A puppet with the strings cut. “And it was wounded pride, more than any other consideration, that made Wickham need to fight me.”
They reached the East Cliff. Darcy sat with great relief on a bench, and looked out over the coastal fortifications, the cannon pointing out, and at the beach below them, with the bathers out along the sand. The waves rose and crashed against the sand. In the harbor many ships stood behind the breakwater and the long piers. In the distance a warship was approaching the harbor. He thought it was a frigate, as it had a single deck of guns, but seemed to be too large to be a sloop.
Mr. Bennet knocked at the door of the fort and he spoke briefly with one of the soldiers before setting George down. Mr. Bennet then rubbed at his shoulders and stretched his neck to each side.
“I walked down this path,” Darcy told Elizabeth. “On the way to the duel. I stopped for half a minute on the other side of the fort to look at the surf, and the way the dawn light played over it. The sea had glowed. The breezes went through my coat, and the scent of salt was heavy. I had never seen anything so beautiful.”
She squeezed his hand.
